Machine Building Intern (Metal Design & Fabrication)

Farmless; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 10,000 - 12,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

1000 EUR gross per month

Free vegan lunch

Bike to work in Amsterdam

Hands-on learning

All under one roof

Job summary

Farmless is offering a 6-month full-time internship in Amsterdam, starting Sep/Oct 2026. You will join a team turning a batch harvest line into a continuous process, designing and building the hardware and controls, including CIP, tanks, and manifolds.

You’ll work across the workshop, pilot brewery, and R&D spaces, with significant ownership and impact on production readiness. You will be embedded in a small, fast-moving group, collaborating with scientists and engineers, and you will have

Qualifications

• Must be enrolled for the duration of the internship.
• Studying mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, process or chemical engineering (HBO/university/VET).
• Willing to work across workshop, pilot plant and desk environments.
• English fluency; Dutch not required.

Responsibilities

• Own a central project end to end within the line rebuild.
• Design and implement pieces of equipment and controls.
• Contribute to continuous line conversion from batch to continuous.
• Help build the workshop and supporting infrastructure.

Skills

Engineering student

Hands-on maker

English communication

Willingness to learn

Education

Engineering program (Mechanical/Electrical/Mechatronics/Process/Chemical)

Tools

Welding equipment

Machining tools

Automation systems

Electrical wiring

Programming

Job description

We're building the protein breweries of the future. Our process is up to 5,000× more land-efficient than animal or plant protein. In the coming years we'll run our first commercial facilities producing thousands of tonnes of protein.

That efficiency comes from fermentation. But fermentation only gets you a tank full of broth. Turning that into a protein ingredient someone can eat is a separate problem, and it's the one with the machines. This internship is about building them.

The internship is 6 months, full time in Amsterdam, starting September/October 2026.

The role

Our harvest line runs batch today. We're converting it to a fully integrated continuous line, and that's the project you're joining.

It means rebuilding unit operations that were never designed to run this way, building new ones that don't exist yet, and creating all the connective tissue that makes a line: plumbing, buffer tanks, valves, sensors, wiring, and a CIP system that can clean the whole thing automatically.

Most companies buy this from a vendor and wait eight months. We don't. Our pilot brewery, R&D lab, test kitchen and workshop are under one roof, and when we need a piece of equipment we design it, source it, weld it and wire it ourselves.

Our last hardware intern built a UHT skid from scratch - designed, sourced, assembled, welded, wired, programmed, commissioned in three months. It's running today. That's the level of ownership on offer, and it's the reason this internship is worth doing.

The bar: your project ends when the machine you built is running on production days. Not a drawing package, not a design review. Stainless with product flowing through it, going to our kitchen, where you can taste what your machine made.

What you'll own

One central project, yours end to end. See the ideas below: which one you take depends on where you're strongest and what the plant needs when you arrive, and we'll work that out with you.

Central Thermal Skid: Design a centralised utility system packing both high-capacity heating and deep chilling into one machine. Tied to a smart manifold, you’ll size, build, and tune this system to push precise, independent thermal loads to separate tanks across the floor without cross-talk or starvation.

Continuous Treatment Reactor: Convert a critical batch step into a continuous process (PFR or CSTR). You’ll handle it from concept to commissioning, sizing, thermal design, fabrication, integration, and validating performance against the process models.

Clean-In-Place (CIP) System: A continuous line needs automated cleaning to be viable. You’ll design and build the full CIP skid: tanks, dosing, routing, and verification ensuring the plant can run for days instead of hours without manual tear-downs.

Line Rebuild & Integration: Rebuild the line around existing or repurposed equipment. You’ll modify unit operations for continuous flow, reverse-engineer older machinery with modern controls, and build the connective tissue (manifolds, buffer tanks, frames) that ties the process together.

Beyond your project

You're expected to have opinions about the whole line, not just your corner of it.

Walk the process, watch production days, find out where it actually stalls and then tell us. Some of the best things you could do here start with noticing that a step takes four hours because of one badly placed valve. If you can back it up and build the fix, build the fix.

You’ll also get your hands on everything else: bench-scale rigs so the scientists can test a route next week instead of next quarter, fixing what breaks on production days, fabricating whatever the team needs, and figuring out why something that worked yesterday doesn't today.

And you’ll help build the workshop itself. Right now there’s a welding setup, metal working tools, 3D printers and a full electronics workstation. There's a budget to expand it, and what we buy is largely driven by what your builds need. Every machine you spec is one you’ll use.

Who you are

You've built things. Maybe a bike you rebuilt, a brewing rig, a CNC conversion, a robot that mostly works. Tell us about it.

Beyond that:

• You're studying mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, process or chemical engineering — HBO, university, Hochschule/Fachhochschule, MBO or an equivalent applied or vocational program. We care what you can do, not which track you’re on. We can sponsor visas.
• You're comfortable moving between the workshop, the pilot plant and a desk.
• You work well in a small team and speak good English. Dutch isn't needed.
• You're still enrolled for the duration of the internship.

Nice to have: welding, machining, plumbing, automation or controls work, electronics, programming, or a biochemistry background. Nobody arrives with all of it. If you have some and you’re quick, that works.

Expected outcomes

• Equipment you designed and built, running in production and used daily by our team
• Real fabrication done: welding, sheet metal, plumbing, wiring
• The full loop from requirement to working machine, owned by you, several times over
• Having converted a real process line from batch to continuous, at an age when most engineers have only read about it
• A workshop that exists because you specified it

What you can expect from Farmless

• €1000 gross per month, for six months
• You'll learn as much as you can absorb
• Everything under one roof: pilot brewery, R&D lab, workshop, food application, kitchen. You can walk from a problem to the people who understand it in under a minute
• Purchasing power. When your build needs a part or a new machine, you order it, no filing a request and waiting three weeks
• Free vegan lunch, cooked in our own kitchen
• Bike to work in Amsterdam

About Farmless

Farmless was founded in 2022 by Adnan Oner. Within two years we have successfully validated the full fermentation to fork process. In the fall of 2024 we moved into a single building that houses R&D, pilot brewery, food application, professional kitchen and offices. Our focus is now on scaling the process by order of magnitude steps and getting to regulatory approval in our most important markets.

We’re based within the city ring of Amsterdam – for a reason. We want to attract the best people from around the world and believe that Amsterdam is a great place to settle – and bike to work. On top of that, the Netherlands is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. The Dutch have a mindset to push the boundaries of food production and have the practical expertise to scale up our fermentation platform.

We believe that hardware startups can thrive in Europe, which has the toughest novel foods procedure of the world. When we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. (Also, we want Europe to accelerate.)

We’ve raised €12 million in total with top tier investors including World Fund, Vorwerk Ventures, Revent and Nucleus.